Fish Out of Water
by the Marysue Murderess
Summary: I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now, I've thought maybe I drowned in both. [OC SI]
1. Chapter 1

**Rebirth.**

**WARNING: CONTAINS OCS AND EVENTUAL MANGA SPOILERS! READ AT CAUTION!**

**Send footnotes for additional warnings/information.**

Cover Image Art By: Solkeera . deviantart . com

**. . .**

* * *

"I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now, I've thought maybe I drowned in both."

* * *

I was born in the same moment I died, like a flash of lightning in the night. I was alive for a single moment of bright electricity, crackling in your eardrums and shattering the ground, and then I was _gone_.

I remember seeing my own body, as if looking at it from high above. At first, I thought I was looking down upon my twin sister... But then I realized I wasn't. It was me, bobbing up and down amongst the reeds near the shoreline, _dead. _Blood had seeped through my shirt and jeans, pooling around me like paint drips in a glass of murky tap water. The lake water had been cold, I remembered, cold enough to make me shiver before I drowned. One of my arms had been askew, suspended above my head as if I had been reaching for help, the skin and muscle peeled away so that I could see streaks of ivory bone. My ordinarily dark skin had faded into a horrible, ghostly white, making me look more like a ghoul from a low-budget horror film than a corpse. My eyes were closed, as if I was sleeping, but I knew otherwise.

_Dead._

I had watched my chest to search for breathing, expecting to see the familiar rise and fall of my ribcage as I breathed. I saw nothing. My chest was as still and frozen as a block of ice. The familiar thump of my heart had slowed to a stop, the melody of life that had thrummed through me my entire life cut short in a single, bitter twist of fate.

_No. No. No. Please, no._

_I don't want to die!  
_

I screamed, expecting to be greeted with the familiar site of smoky fog as my breath came into contact with the frigid air. My breath _should _smoke.

It doesn't.

I stared down at my wrist, the one that had been untouched by blood and gore, and pinched as hard as I could.

I didn't feel a thing.

* * *

I'd had nightmares before- falling nightmares, drowning nightmares, giving-a-speech-without-knowing-the-words nightmares- but I have always been able to open my eyes and lift my head from the pillow, forcing the horror movie that had been playing behind my closed eyelids to stop completely.

This is different.

I can't make it stop, no matter how hard I try.

The impending darkness comes all too soon, swallowing me up and clogging my lungs with putrid, heavy air. I gasp, choking on nothing at all. I can taste something burnt at the back of my throat, as if my very being is on fire, but I am powerless to stop it. My body is no longer under my control, and that is the most terrifying feeling of all- being able to see but unable to move, to save yourself from the pain.

It is then that I feel truly dead.

_There is nothing._

* * *

I was alive again in the next second. This life was a flash of dark, steady fog and emptiness, swallowing my soul. I felt strangely cold, as if I had been plunged head first into a bucket of icy water but then jerked back out. I shook as chills wracked my body, feeling completely and utterly _exposed._

_I'm in a bed_, I had thought. Sheets and blankets were tucked around me, cocooning my limbs against my body with an almost comforting tightness. There was no light in this room except for a faint, almost tentative yellow glow that hovered directly above me and a dark, chilling gleam that seemed to have settled over the entire room, darkening it with malice.

_Where am I?_

I did not know those sheets, that room, that bed.

I looked down at myself with blurry, clouded eyes, seeing soft fabric wrapped around me from neck to my knees. My feet were bare, my toes wriggling with bizarre energy underneath the constraints of the fabric. Nothing felt frayed or broken. No pain.

There were dark shapes all around me.

_People?_

My eyes couldn't focus in on them, if they were there at all. I couldn't see anything except fuzzy, blocky shapes and clumsily moving figures. My first thought was blindness, _brain damage. _The word 'vegetable' came to mind, and a faint note of fear rang out in my mind. But... something wasn't right. My toes moved, and so did my fingers if I tried hard enough. My head was oddly heavy, too heavy to raise on my own. I blinked, feeling my eyelashes brush against my cheeks. Touch. Movement. I wasn't... broken. I felt strangely whole, as if I had spiraled through the vortex between life and death and came out with a few extra limbs. I felt _heavy_, not hurt like I should have felt.

_Hell, I should be dead right now. What am I complaining about?! _I had thought, silently thanking whatever power had saved my life. If I could just get out of these damn blankets, I could go back to my life. I could go back to living just the way I had before and pretend nothing had happened.

The dark shapes above me moved, shifting until one stood directly above me. Something wrapped around my body, what felt like a _giant _set of rough, masculine hands, and heaved me upwards.

I screamed.

The sensation of being cradled in someone's arms when you are well aware of your height being far too much for them to handle is... _disconcerting_, to say the least. All my life, I had been above average in height and lanky, stretched thin over a carefully sculpted, boyish physique. Being able to be picked up so easily was a truly terrifying experience to the unprepared, especially when I was unable to see much of anything at all.

_What had happened to me?!_

Had my death somehow ruined me so greatly that I was in fact missing parts of my body, yet didn't know it? That had sounded reasonable, but logic threatened to tell me otherwise. I could move my fingers and toes, albeit slightly, blink, and wiggle of my own accord. This meant my spinal column was intact. If I could feel both hands, legs, and other major appendages, then why did I feel so small?!

I wailed again, attempting to bat way the hands that held me, but could hardly even lift my arms inside the fabric. I wiggled my fingers again just to make sure my limbs were moving at all, but couldn't do much aside from that. I couldn't even tell the blurry figure to put me down. My vocal chords seemed almost unable to form words at all. I wasn't much of a talker to begin with, but that was a _choice. _This wasn't, and it _terrified me._

A breathy "hush" came from the large, blurry figure that held me. The voice sounded male, far too low for a woman. I suppose the man intended to be comforting, but the noise only confused me further. What kind of response was that, speaking to a fully functioning teenager as if they were-

... a baby?!

_ Am I... a baby?  
_

The idea sounded so utterly ridiculous and intangible that I would have dismissed it right away if not for the fact that it _made sense. _My poor vision, the strange weakness in my limbs, the tightly wrapped swaddling cloth- all of these things were familiar to me. I hadn't realized exactly why before, but now, everything was becoming clear. I _knew _these things, I honestly did. I had five siblings once, and a twin. I knew babies well enough to realize-

I was a baby.

Somehow, this didn't terrify me as much as the idea of being picked up. Once I had made sense of the strange occurrence, I was no longer afraid. I had always believed in spirits, and reincarnation didn't seem horribly far fetched. The idea of being reborn in another body, in another life, had existed since the beginning of time, in the earliest of religions. The idea of slipping between this world and the next and somehow out of both of them entirely was truly enchanting, like something out of one of my fairy tales. Appealing, almost, being allowed the chance to rewind and start over every time you failed.

I knew I had died, I knew I had. I had felt the air leave my body, and could vividly remember the feeling of choking on nothing but saltwater until I simply gave up. I suppose I had decided that dying in peace was better than fighting against imbalanced odds, but I couldn't be sure. The memory of the last few seconds of my life is blurred, skewed beyond the points of reality as the world erupted into stars. Those stars I had seen hadn't been in the night sky, no, they had been signs of my death and the seconds that I had left. I had counted them.

_5-4-3-2-1_

_And then there was blackness._

There was simply no other explanation for these events- waking up in the body of an infant with the mind and memories of an adult. It was a physiological anomaly, I decided. _Abnormal._

I had been given a rare chance to redo it all, and I decided I would take advantage of this to the fullest. I hadn't done much of anything in my past life except simply _exist_, and certainly not anything noteworthy. To me, this new life seemed like a chance to start over, and to do it _right. _In my past life, I had been great at only one thing- making mistakes. I had never experienced the heavily sought-after "perfect" life, or completed any of my major goals. I had lived, died, and wasted away. I would have ended up dead anyway, I mused, _why not expedite the process?_

I decided that things would be different this time around. I would live my life right. I would wait for others to make their moves. I would make my own. I'd lived once, and I had more mental experience than anyone else at this age would have had. There was so much I could do...

But I hadn't known then what had truly happened to me, or where I was. I wouldn't know for quite some time. And by then, it was already too late.

In that moment, I was at peace, as foolish as it was. I should have savored the taste of freedom then, for I wouldn't experience it again for quite some time, if ever. But I did not. I chose that moment to drift off to sleep, lulled by the beat of the stranger's heart. It was not like my own had been- a jittery, frantic faintness that never seemed to catch up with the speed of my mind. This heartbeat was solid and strong, humming against my right ear like the pounding of a drum. If you thought about it, it almost sounded like waves crashing against the seashore in a never-ending cycle.

"Kasumi," Someone whispered, voice soft and breathy.

_Kasumi... _It was a pretty name- a whisper, a sighing sound like a breeze blowing through a field of wheat.

_Who's name is that? _I had wanted to ask, but was unable to.

I opened a single eye, searching for the source of the voice, but I couldn't locate the speaker. The entire room was nothing but a blocky swirl of darkness combated by weak splotches of light. Sighing, I turned inwards against the hard chest that cradled me, feeling oddly comforted by the beat of the stranger's heart. I closed my eyes yet again, releasing my grip on reality and allowing myself to drift off to sleep yet again.

* * *

I opened my eyes one more time, in a quick sort of blink, puzzled by the strange energy that seemed to flow through my body in an almost regulated pattern. It felt as if someone had injected lightning into my veins and allowed it to travel throughout my body, running amok inside my nerves and muscles. I didn't know what it was or why such a strange energy had settled within me. At the time, I blamed medication or the weather, I'm not sure which. The possibility of this energy being anything more than just a figment of my imagination was too ludicrous to consider, and I dismissed it entirely.

Looking back on it, I should have paid it far more attention.

During those days, when I was fresh and new to the world one again, I hadn't done much of anything at all. I had slept most of the time, curled into a tight ball underneath piles of blankets until it was time for me to eat. The idea of a bottle disgusted me at first, but I soon learned to deal with it when I realized there was no other way for me to eat. My head was too heavy to hold up on my own, as most baby's are, and I couldn't walk, so I had very little to do for the first six months of my "life." I simply did what all babies do- _nothing._

I didn't get a good look at my new "mother" until I was at least two weeks old. My eyes finally had begun to clear up, allowing in more light and color than before. At first, it had been strangely overwhelming, but I had gradually grown used to "proper" vision again. My mother had come into view, padding along quietly in what looked like a royal blue yukata. She had messy, dark hair and strange, grey-ish blue skin. I couldn't help but wonder when I looked at her if she had some sort of chemical deficiency or perhaps a natural discoloration that made her flesh look so _blue_. It was unnatural, I thought. Somehow, she managed to look well-put together despite the fact that she had strange facial tattoos- they looked like _gills, _of all things- and was wearing a bathrobe. _Clearly, _I thought, _someone is into heavy metal. _I couldn't think of any other reason- besides gang markings, that is- for those horrible tattoos.

My "father" looked rather similar to her in a weird way, as if they were related but just barely. He had the same messy mane of hair as my mother, but his was far more blue than her's was and stood up in a strange way that suggested he spent a lot of time in front of a mirror. His eyes were the same shade of dark, empty black, but possessed a strange warmth that you wouldn't have expected to find there. He was heavy set, as was my mother, but both of them were built solidly, like tanks. Vaguely, I wondered if he was some sort of professional fighter. He dressed like a martial artist, in a bizarre looking jacket and horribly unattractive pinstriped leg warmers. His cheeks were tattooed as well, his baring the same gill-like design as my mother. _Weird_, I decided,_ Both of them were weird_.

They weren't bad parents- far from it, in fact, but they were both very strange. My father would disappear randomly for long stretches of time and then come back in the dead of night, looking either thoroughly worn out or rather bored- but never in-between. I had no idea what he did for a living, but it didn't look like he worked an office job. He never seemed to wear any normal clothes, either. He only shifted between his jacket and leg warmer ensemble and a loose haori over a yukata, much like the one my mother wore around the house.

It wasn't hard to figure out that we were in Japan. It was relieving to be surrounded by such familiar elements and a language I understood. I had been half Japanese in my previous life, and had grown up speaking it with my father before we had finally relocated to Akita prefecture. It seemed that the laws of reincarnation stuck you in the same country, which I found relieving. The country my family had lived in before Japan had been destroyed by communism, and we had been lucky to have gotten out at all. I didn't want to _ever _go back there, childhood be damned.

Some things just aren't worth the risk.

These people were strange and not at all my parents- even if they were, in every sense of the word, my parents- but they were... safe. I could trust them, even if I hadn't known their names for the first several months of my life.

My mother, I learned, was called Hama. I had seen it inscribed on a piece of calligraphy paper that she kept in a frame- _Hama: The Seashore. _The kanji for her name had been written above it in crisp black ink, in a much heavier hand than her name meaning.

"Look, Kasumi," She had murmured, pointing to the crisp kanji with the tip of her index finger. "That's Mommy's name! Can you say it?"

I squinted at the kanji, having a hard time understanding the meaning. I hadn't read in Japanese since my new life had begun, and my reading had been rusty. Finally, I placed the kanji meaning with the sound it was supposed to make.

"Ha..." I tried, "...Ma."

The word came out half broken, half slurred. Ordinarily, I would have spoken without issue, albeit a little quietly. Here, things were different. I was a child, even if I was an adult mentally, and my body was still far behind my mind in terms of maturity. I had chubby, weak legs that hadn't allowed for much other than scooting across the floor and poor hand-eye-coordination. I had poked my father in the eye multiple times when I had meant to pat him, proving that my hands were out of synch with the rest of me.

It was horribly limiting, being stuck like that. I wanted to move much more than I was able to, and it was humiliating to be regressed to the physical state of a toddler whereas I had once been extremely mature for my age. I distinctly remember hearing my original mother once tell me that I had spoken full sentences at the age of six months old, but had walked much later. Here, it was just the opposite. My fine motor skills came before my words, as if I was destined for athletics rather than schoolwork. It was an admittedly strange twist, and I can honestly say I would have preferred it the opposite way. I missed being able to articulate my thoughts and string out long, wordy sentences. Now, I was limited to a few basic words and most of them were simple- like "Mommy," "hungry," and "no." I could say very little else, and it was horribly limiting. I couldn't stand it.

I tried harder than I probably should have to get my point across, but even then I was usually forced to result in tears and screaming fits until my mother simply gave up and gave into my whims. It seemed my dreadful temper had transcended from my previous life into this one, which was far from a good thing.

I can't say I was a well behaved child- _I wasn't_- but I probably had more thoughts pass through my mind in a matter of minutes than any child my age would have. That's hardly something to brag about, but for me, it was enough. I had little else on which to stake my claim to greatness- which honestly wasn't all that great.

My parents thought the world of me, regardless of my frequent tantrums, and put up with a lot more than they probably should have. I was a messy, annoying baby, and they were great. They didn't quite fill the void my previous parents had left, but I had grown to love them more with each passing day. They may have been strange and blue, but I loved them all the same.

And sometimes love is blind.

"Kasumi, do you want to play outside?" My mother asked one day, when I had just finished playing with every toy I was physically aware of being within this building- for today, anyway.

I nodded. I hadn't been outside before, as far as I knew, in this life. My parents had kept me inside while I was relearning how to grab things and walk around properly. I supposed they had been protecting me, but I hadn't then known how dangerous the world outside truly was. To me, the outside had been only one thing- _outside. _I hadn't been afraid in the slightest. I _should_ have been.

But I wasn't.

I had followed my mother outside without a hint of fear, excited to finally be allowed outdoors for the first time in this life. I wanted to run and roll around in the dirt like I had in my previous childhood, tiring myself out so greatly that I'd drop into a comatose like state of sleep before I was even able to make it back inside. That was the sort of childhood I'd had- exhausting and enjoyable. My life had been good before it had gone bad. This was seemed almost perfect in comparison, or so I thought.

The darkness would rear its ugly head soon.

"Play!" I said, bouncing in place and clapping my hands.

My mother unlocked the front door, pushing the heavy, cast-iron door open with a single hand. The skyline came into view, a long stretch of water-logged, boggy grown and sparse trees. The air was thick with fog that seemed to latch onto us as soon as we opened the door, clinging to my skin and hair with the strength of heavy-duty superglue.

"Yucky!" I whined, attempting to wipe some of the strange, moist fog off of me and onto my tee-shirt.

"I know," My mother agreed, nodding sympathetically, "The mist _is_ yucky."

_Mist? _The word reminded me of something, but I couldn't remember what. I scratched my head in confusion, pushing my sticky bangs away from my forehead with a chubby fist.

And then it hit me.

I _did _know this place. The architecture had looked familiar, and so had the skyline, but I had never known why. I had never lived within close proximity to a swamp or large bodies water before, so I knew it wasn't a childhood memory or some sort of late-onset déjà vu.

This place looked almost _exactly _like Kirigakure, a village I had once read about in my favorite manga, Naruto. Vaguely, I wondered if this was the area Kishimoto had based Kirigakure's design off of, but dismissed that idea entirely when I saw the building off to my far right. If I squinted, I could see the giant kanji for "Mizukage" inscribed on the brick wall.

Mizukage wasn't a real word. I was _positive _it wasn't a real word. Kishimoto, Naruto's creator, had created those positions entirely on his own. In the real world, the title of "Mizukage" was about as valuable as the term "human". It wouldn't have been of any importance.

Here, it looked like a big deal. The building was in the center of a horribly familiar looking village, surrounded by strange, cylindrical buildings and craggy mountains. I only knew of a few mountains that could be found within Japan, and all of the ones I could name were capped with snow. These mountains were strangely shaped, as if they had been made entirely from haphazardly molded modeling clay and then thrown into the real world.

I swallowed, biting my inner cheek to hold back a scream. This could _not _be happening. It couldn't. There was no way in hell that I had somehow traveled through the innerworkings of the universe and had come out in Naruto, of all things. There was simply no way...!

"So," My mother said, "How do you like your first proper look at Kirigakure?"

I screamed.

* * *

Author's Note:

浜 is the kanji for Hama's name.

水影 is Mizukage.

Dedicated to Otaku Neko Ninja Miko Tenshi and Silver Queen, two awesome ladies who really inspire me!

[I am half Japanese. Really. I'm not bullshitting you. Plus, I do live in Akita prefecture. Check my Tumblr to see my translated doujinshi if you doubt my Japanese speaking capabilities.]

I got a message saying that I couldn't do it, that I couldn't write this story and make it decent. You've read my profile, haven't you? ;) That just makes me want to do it more. I can't promise that I will be able to do this well, but I'll try as hard as I possibly can. My beginnings have always been utter shit, so do wait for the next chapter for this to actually grow decent.

This story will be nowhere near my top priority, so DON'T WORRY! Chinatsu is of utmost importance here, and she will be until I have at least gotten here through the Academy and onto life as a genin. I love writing her too much to abandon her now. Anyhow, this is a self-insert, by far one of the worst ideas I've ever had. It will be set in Kirigakure because I honestly can't see a reason not to (and it's the Village the coincides the best with my personal likes an abilities) and I am quite biased in Kiri's favor as it is.

Critique _always _welcome!

-MSM-


	2. Chapter Two:

**Chapter Two:**

* * *

"I don't know where I am going, but I am on my way."  
― Voltaire

* * *

I screamed.

It all made _far _too much sense- the bizarre jackets my father wore, the strange glint of metal that I occasionally caught a glimpse of on his right shoulder… My father was undoubtedly a shinobi of Kirigakure, and I could assume my mother was as well. She had that "way" about her, regardless of the fact that she had never done anything to warrant my views. She was solid, a wall of ropey muscle and raw strength, blessed with impressive agility that I could tell didn't come from just anywhere. I had seen her catch falling projectiles in a matter of seconds before they dared to come anywhere near me, and I could have _sworn _I had once seen her standing on the ceiling.

I couldn't believe I had never noticed. The signs had been so obvious- the clothing, the shoes, the weather... Everything I had seen and heard in this life had pointed so glaringly, _so strongly_, to the world of Naruto that it was shameful I hadn't noticed it before. This world was not my own, and I should have known from the very beginning.

My parents were trained killers.

I gasped, choking on nothing at all as I thought about all of my temper tantrums, and what _could _have happened to me if I had pushed either of my parents too far. I had been lucky so far, but that didn't necessarily guarantee my safety in the future. I would have to step lightly from now on, regardless of how angry or upset I was. Premature death was something I had already experienced and I _definitely_ didn't want to have to deal with that ever again. It was horrible, being stuck in this infantile body, and I couldn't wait to grow out of it. Being an infant was only fun if you were actually an infant, not a nineteen-year-old stuffed inside an ill-fitting body. It was as if I was wearing a shoe that didn't fit- I could walk and wear it, but it wasn't right and it never would be.

"What's wrong with you?!" My mother barked, her harsh voice jolting me out of my thoughts.

She wasn't usually so angry, but I could tell something had been bothering her all day. I wasn't quite sure what had concerned her so deeply, but I could make a guess. My father hadn't been home for awhile now, and I could tell she was getting anxious.

"Excited," I lied, making full use of my single-word vocabulary.

There was little I could say to convince her with my limited vocabulary and clumsy gestures, but it was all I had. My mother couldn't see what was going on inside my head, and I couldn't expect her to. Even if I was her daughter and shared quite a few of her genes, we weren't the same person. We didn't even hail from the same universe!

"Don't scare me like that!" She shrieked, "I thought someone was trying to kill you!"

_But... you love me, don't you__? Even if we aren't the same?_

"Sorry," I whispered, patting her on the leg with a small hand.

_I didn't mean to worry you. _

"It's okay, 'Sumi, just don't do it again, alright?"

Her voice was soft and gentle, and sounded too much like my own mother- the first one. Tears pooled in the corners of my eyes, threatening to spill over in a split second. I missed her- my real mother. I didn't want this woman, _this woman_ with jagged teeth and blue skin. I wanted my real mother back, the one who gave me my wild curls and my angry heart, the woman who had eyes brighter than the sun. I had taken her for granted while I had her, and now I regretted it.

The tears spilled, running down my cheeks and chin and splashing onto the ground, making ripples in the puddles beneath my bare feet. I wanted nothing more than to stop crying, to stop feeling, but I knew that was unachievable. I had always been this way, even in my past life. I felt too much, but did too little.

It was my personal curse, this weakness.

"'Sumi?! What's wrong, sweetheart?"

My mother knelt down beside me, brushing my bangs out of my watery eyes with a large hand. Her palms were rough but familiar, and it was all I could do to keep from sobbing. She was my mother, but she wasn't. She was a replacement, a fictional entity that would never be real no matter how badly I wanted her to be.

_Go away! _I wanted to scream. _I can't be your daughter, Hama._

But I didn't.

I stayed.

* * *

From the very moment I had been conceived, my future had been planned. My parents had decided that I would become a shinobi before I was even able to hold my head up on my own. This was the way of the Kirigakure ninja- to churn out as many future shinobi as physcially possible in order to increase our population and military strength. The Mizukage was insane, this much I knew. Yagura wanted power and lots of it, as much and as fast as possible. He had made some sort of secret rule in the years leading up to my birth that each family would produce at least two children if they were physically capable of doing so. All able-bodied men and women had been paired off, married into clans based upon their skill level and personal capabilities. Yagura had made families and children a purely political affair, completely disregarding relationships and "true love" in favor of producing the most powerful offspring possible.

I was a product of one of his many arrangements. My parents, both of them, were incredibly powerful shinobi. They were both Hoshigaki to the core, boasting sizable chakra reserves and swordsmanship skills. Neither of them were kage level, but they were both functioning members of the ANBU Black Ops, which said far more about their skill level than I could have.

It must have been embarrassing for them to have ended up with a daughter like me.

No matter what I did, I just _couldn't _control my chakra. My mother had been attempting to teach me since I was hardly a toddler, gently working me through the technicalities of separating water from a cup into single droplets, and manipulating them to suit your fancy. It was something called the "Water Concentration Technique," and according to her, it was essential to my success in the Ninja Academy. I had been trying to work it out for months now, and I just couldn't make it work. Every time I attempted to even separate the water, the only thing I could do was lift the water from the cup. I couldn't separate it or change its form like I should have been able to. The water stayed where it was, hovering just above the cup until I ran out of patience and simply returned it to the cup. Day after day, I tried to separate the water, but to no avail.

My chakra just didn't want to obey me. If I pushed, it pulled, and if I pulled, it pushed. We were never in synch, no matter what I did. Even my mother's help brought forth no relief. I struggled and struggled, trying my hardest until I had no chakra left, but nothing changed.

I was a _failure_.

My parents knew, I could tell, when they looked at me. They never said anything to discourage me, but I could feel disappointment radiating from them each time I failed. They were both shinobi of an impressive caliber, and having a failure like me for a child was clearly something they would have never expected. I don't think they knew _how_ to deal with me- someone that struggled to complete even the simplest chakra control exercises. Failure just wasn't their way.

But it was mine.

I tried _every single day _until I could try no more for an entire month, and I had made little to no headway with chakra manipulation. It was time, I decided, to give up.

It was then that my mother told me she was pregnant with my replacement. Those weren't her words, but I could read between the lines. I wasn't good enough, and now they had someone to take my place.

My brother was born eleven months after my first encounter with the outside world, on Valentines Day. The village wasn't decorated with cheesy hearts and glitter like I had expected it to be, and it seemed that no one in Kirigakure gave the holiday a second thought. My father didn't even give my mother anything, which would have been a truly dreadful thing had we been anywhere else. But in Kirigakure, they didn't care. Trivialities were nothing to them.

My brother was small, much smaller than I had been, but his eyes were already very sharp. He looked more like my father than I did, with his straight dark hair and bright eyes. I favored my mother, with wavier hair and dusky blue skin, but it was hard to say I looked very much like either of my parents. My brother was the perfect copy of my father, who was one of the strongest shinobi in our entire clan. It was clear that my brother was destined for greatness.

Unintentionally, I bled into the background.

"What do you think we should name him?" My mother had asked, speaking directly to me this time.

"Tuna," I said without thinking.

My brother had wiggled at the sound of my voice, opening his small eyes to blink owlishly at me beneath the bright hospital lights. He squinted, rubbing at his face with one of his tiny hands before he seemingly lost interest and turned away, pressing his face into my mother's stomach.

_Rude!_

He had looked just like a little fish with his teensy gills and pale blue skin that I couldn't resist. My own name meant "Mist"- as cliché as it was- and I was tired of being the only one in our family that had to deal with having a strange name.

He would suffer with me.

My parents exchanged glances. My father looked pained, as if he could hardly bare to tell me no regardless of the fact that he'd done so hundreds of times before. My mother had covered her mouth with her free hand in an attempt to keep her laughter at bay. Her dark eyes had shimmered with mirth and had given away her true feelings despite her efforts to do otherwise.

"Um... How about a different name, sweetheart? I don't think we should name your little brother after food, even if he is a cute little fishie." My father crooned, smoothing my messy bangs out of my eyes in a misguided attempt at keeping me from throwing a fit.

I had scowled, crossing my chubby arms across my chest and jutting out my lower lip. My father _always_ fell for that one, no matter how many times I used it. My father was simple minded when it came to me, bending to accommodate my every whim and want. I suppose it was his way of making up for all the times he wasn't there when I needed him most. He was a shinobi, and he had more to worry about than just _me, _even if I was his only daughter.

Familial ties or not, I simply wasn't good enough.

"Kiyoshi," I said, "I'll call him _Kiyoshi._"

* * *

Kiyoshi was everything I had expected him to be- a natural protégé in every sense of the word. He was tall for his age and strong- even if he was pudgier than me since he spent all his time stealing my food- and his chakra reserves were _enormous_. Kiyoshi had outclassed me from the moment he was born, and I didn't doubt that he would continue to do so for the rest of his life.

He was just like my father. That's what scared me the most. Everyone in our clan respected my father because of his skills and many of my cousins looked up to him. Kiyoshi was far too similar to him to become anything other than a genius, whereas I was hardly anything like either of my parents and destined for failure. We were polar opposites, and as much as it pained me to say so- Kiyoshi was the strongest. I was the background character, the shadow child, and I wouldn't be able to do much of anything with him blocking my light.

Kiyoshi had become someone I loved to hate. He wasn't a bad little brother-at least, not all the time- but I couldn't help but feel stung whenever I saw my parents fawning over him in ways they had never done with me. As childish as it was, I wanted attention and couldn't stand having it taken away from me. I hadn't been that way in my previous life- in fact, I had been just the opposite- but now, things were different. I was tired of waiting in the background, tired of watching Kiyoshi being praised and prideful...

It was time for me to take the stage.

My parents adored him, that much I knew, but only for _now. _Once he made a mistake, they'd drop him like a hot potato. All I had to do was defeat him, just once, and it would all be over.

_And then, it would be my turn._

* * *

It seemed as if my mind was not my own.

Since I had been reborn, I had grown increasingly more selfish and sharp tongued. When I was around Kiyoshi, it seemed as if we were constantly in a competition. I couldn't be happy with just playing with him, I had to be in a competition and _winning. _It was as if this world was poisoning me and tearing me down in an attempt to make me one of its own.

I did not feel like myself. In my previous life, I had _never_ behaved this way. I had once been a reclusive being, hiding in the shadows and despising the light that seemed to crop up around me... But now, I wanted it all for _me_. I couldn't stand seeing my parents coo over my brother as if he was some sort of hero despite the fact that he had done literally _nothing _since his birth. It was as if something inside me craved their attentions, and would do anything in order to garner said attention.

_Is this what being four is like?_

I had no memories of my years as a toddler in my past life, but something told me my behavior wasn't out of the ordinary. My parents didn't seem perturbed by my behavior in the slightest. In fact, they seemed to encourage it. It was as if they _wanted _me to strike back when my brother knocked me down rather than restrain myself like I should have.

And then I realized that what they had done was not without reason.

My brother was _meant _to push me. He was supposed to be more powerful than I was, and I was supposed to grow to hate him, bitter and fuming with hatred before I was even in the Academy. My parents _wanted _me to hate him.

Hatred only makes you stronger.

Those five words were the unspoken motto of Kirigakure, passed down through generations until the very idea was so deeply ingrained in our minds that we would never be able to forget it. Unlike other villages that focused on peace and prosperity, Kirigakure fed on negative energy and hatred. From what I had seen, our country _loved _to start wars and did so with a burning passion. I wasn't sure how many wars we had fought in, but I suspected the number was higher than it should have been. Kirigakure didn't back out of fights, and they sure as hell didn't forget and forgive.

I had been reborn into the bloodiest, most _hellbound _country in all of Naruto, this I was sure of. There wasn't a day that went by when I didn't wish that I had been born into a different land- like Konohagakure or Suna- where the people were friendly and you were encouraged to succeed.

Here, it was survival of the fittest, and I fell short.

"So grow stronger," My father said, as if he had read my mind.

I bit my lip. "I'm scared."

I was six years old. There was no way I could kill someone out of anything other self-defense. My parents might have been able to, but I wasn't like them. I was different.

"Don't be. Just... push through it, little tigershark. Grow big and strong and make your daddy proud."

When he spoke, his lips curled upwards into a gentle smile- the sort of smile I had never seen before. My father was normally seen sneering and cold, looking down on anyone he didn't feel met his expectations. He was difficult to live with, too big for our world and too old to understand what it was like to be a little girl.

But even my father had a soft side. He liked to play with Kiyoshi more than he did me, but he still read me books and played the toddler-level equivalent of Black Jack with me when he had the chance. He wasn't a bad person, but he wasn't that great either. He was... a man.

_Just an ordinary man._

Sometimes I wondered if he was blind. He seemed completely unaware of my rivalry with Kiyoshi.. Or perhaps he just _chose _not to acknowledge it. I could never tell with him. My father had been trained to camouflage his emotions and hide behind a mask of false superiority. As a shinobi, this was hardly out of the ordinary. My mother did it as well, but to a lesser degree. I had long since come to terms with the fact that I could _never _tell what they were thinking.

Our parents could sense the tension between us, I was _sure _of it, but my father never seemed to make a big deal out of it. They kept us separated, sending Kiyoshi off on excursions with our father to hone his skills as a shinobi, whereas my mother seemed to have taken it upon herself to drag me to every possible kunoichi class she could find. In Konohagakure, kunoichi classes meant flower arrangement and culture studies- simple things to help a kunoichi blend in in foreign territory. In Kirigakure, kunoichi classes were a requirement issued by Yagura and they weren't nearly so easy-going. Kunoichi classes here were meant to cover everything we should know as women- the shinobi equivalent of health class, I supposed- and was more geared toward our abilities rather than our appearances.

I _hated _those classes.

Every morning at around eleven, my mother would pick me up and leap across the roof-tops towards the Kirigakure Ninja Academy. She would then jog off towards the border patrol houses where she would spend the rest of the day, leaving me with literally _every _other female in my age group. Right away, it became obvious that I wasn't going to make many friends. I was strange looking and bright blue with short-cropped hair that seemed to defy gravity no matter what I did to fix it otherwise, whereas my classmates were the standard "cutesy" types with long hair and tiny, bird-like bone structures. Most of them were already wearing makeup and applying lip gloss before class. I didn't even remember to brush my hair half the time, so you can imagine that we didn't have a lot to talk about.

There were only a few girls in the entire I'd even consider approaching. One was Aiki Ringo, a bright-eyed, easy-going girl with peach hair and the same shark-like teeth I possessed. Almost everyone in class liked Aiki, even if she was a little annoying and sometimes talked _way _too loudly. Aiki talked to anyone and _everyone, _even me. She even tried talking to the tiny girl with bone-colored flesh and strange violet eyes who sat in the back of the classroom every day and _never _spoke to anyone, but garnered no response. Then again, she probably hadn't expected one. Chinatsu was the class loner and took everything far too seriously, our gymnastics training included. And she was mean, too. Chinatsu had a nasty habit of pushing people over and kicking them while they were down. I'd seen her mother praise her for doing so after class once and I couldn't help but think it ran in the family.

I don't think anyone liked her.

Our teacher, a tall, statuesque woman called Mei, couldn't stand her either. They constantly glared at one another during classes, even when Chinatsu was completing round after round of obviously-practiced gymnastics. It was clear that something was up between them, but I didn't know what or why.

I don't think Mei liked me very much. Even at six, I was significantly taller than my peers and more stocky. I was meant to fold in half like the others could or pirouette like a professional ballerina. Mei's classes emphasized on grace and poised movements, both of which were things I couldn't do very well at all. Both my parents and I shared the same solid build, and it wasn't hard to figure out that I'd _always _be like this. I would always be taller and broader than my classmates, and as odd as it made me feel, I couldn't change it in the slightest. Instead, I would have to settle for being the ugly girl.

I spent most of my time in Mei's class quietly watching the others, even when we were given permission to talk. I had never been good at making friends, and I _definitely _wasn't here, either. I had no idea what to talk about in this world. No one here seemed to have any hobbies aside from training, kenjutsu- which was training in itself- or completing missions. There was no common ground. In Kirigakure, clans kept their techniques hidden no matter the cost, even if it meant eliminating one of their men. Even I was forbidden to speak about the Hoshigaki Sage Techniques with anyone who wasn't a Hoshigaki. My father had made that clear before I was even allowed to leave the yard. If even one word got out, I would _die. _No exceptions.

No one talked much in class anyway.

At the end of the week, I just _barely_ managed to pass Mei's class. She gave me points for participation and sent me home with a grimace. When I looked back, she was shaking her head and murmuring about how "some people just aren't meant for acrobatics." Stung, I sprinted all the way home.

After I got my first grade, I never went back to that class again. Instead, I hid behind the building until my mother was long gone and ran off in the direction of the village library. Even Kirigakure had a library, albeit a rather empty one. There, the Mizukage stored the records of village events and kept an eye on the population. They had books as well, but most of those focused on shinobi life skills and weaponry. I immediately latched onto those. As a person who had never even been camping, I was horribly out of my element in this world. I didn't know how to light a fire with anything other than matches or how to hurl kunai. I'd done weapons training in my previous life, back when I had studied judo, but I wasn't sure if anything I knew would be useful enough to help me here.

I had to be careful back then. No one else my age seemed to know how to read yet, and the last thing I wanted to do was behave suspiciously. Here, suspicious got you killed. I had to be careful with what I said and did, even if that meant purposely throwing questions I knew the answers to or holding books upside down when adults passed by. Anything to uphold the image of a normal child.

Normal was good.

Normal was _safe. _

But normal didn't last for very long.

* * *

Author's Note:

Tuna in Japanese is "Akami," just so you know. Kiyoshi means "pure."

I keep picturing Kasumi and her mom as weird versions of Ponyo and Lisa. (Sosuke's Mom) It doesn't help that I accidentally designed them with the same haircuts before I realized that I had done so... O-o Whoops...

I had bad writer's block this week/month, so please forgive the chapter quality TT^TT This one is a bit slowish but there will be action soon. Kasumi doesn't have the same at-home-life that Chinatsu does so not much is happening to her at the moment.

As always I appreciate every review and critique I receive, and every reader that I have. You all count to me, whether you follow me or not. Thanks a lot for reading my work, even if it's not always the best.

-MSM-


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